Stock Market News

The share price ofGlaxoSmithKline tanked 6% on Wednesday afternoon, leading the fallers on the FTSE 100, as the drugmaker disappointed with a 4% drop in quarterly sales to £5.6bn and lowered its full-year outlook. It now expects to deliver 2014 full-year core earnings per share "broadly similar to last year", down from its previous estimate of 4-8% growth.

Heading the other way was outsourcing group Capita after impressing investors with a strong set of interim results. The firm said that pre-tax profits rose 15% to £238m during the half, which was helped by £1.3bn of major contract wins, as it hiked its interim dividend by over 10%.

After an earlier rise, mining stocks had mostly dropped into the red by the afternoon with Fresnillo, Randgold and Anglo American all registering losses. However, BHP Billiton was bucking the trend after hailing a strong first-half operating performance with annual records achieved across 12 operations and four commodity classes

Accountancy software firm Sage was subdued after revealing that organic revenue growth slowed slightly to 4.3% in the third quarter. However, it still expects growth to be much stronger in the final three months of its financial year.

Chemicals group Johnson Matthey declined after saying that first-quarter results were affected, as expected, by currency headwinds and the loss of an important contract with platinum group Anglo American Platinum. Sales were more or less flat over the year.

Utilities group SSE was a heavy faller on the FTSE 100 after going ex-dividend, along with exchange operator LSE.

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